We'll Always Have Paris
by ForeverWanderer
Summary: Zelda is the fashion princess of Paris. Link is an American writer trying to escape his lack of talent. A match made in... France?
1. Pee is for Paris

Zelda is the fashion princess of Paris. Link is an American writer trying to escape his lack of talent. A match made in... France??!

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**_We'll Always Have Paris_**

***

_Autumn. The City of Light. The Taxi driver drives me from the airport to the center of the city. I look out my window. Gray skies. Gray buildings. The Seine meanders lazily to my right. If the river didn't have that weird sewage-gray hue, it'd look pretty romantic. Ah, the Notre Dame. Coming up from behind, it looks like someone was _really_ trying to impress the king with their flying buttresses. No. Wait. Coming up from behind, it looks like the nest of a great big tektite with flying buttresses for legs... no. Wait. Coming up from behind... oh, who cares about the damn Notre Dame? What the hell am I doing in Paris anyway?? _

I put down the journal as the Taxi driver zipped along the main boulevard on the left bank of the Seine. The driver stopped suddenly, pulling around a corner and slamming on the brakes.

"What's going on???" I asked the driver.

"We are here, monsieur."

"Huh?"

"'Aven't you beeen paying attention, monsieur? Shakespeare eez right over there." He pointed back towards the Notre Dame. "Quince euros, monsieur."

I handed him one of the colorful euros in my wallet and stepped out of the taxi with my one backpack. I headed in the direction the driver pointed.

_Paris. The City of Light. Here- in the center- in the chaos- in the glory and drama of it all... note to self. Quit annoying inner monologue habit._

"Shakespeare" was the name of the place I hoped to stay. Shakespeare & Co., a famous bookstore right on the Seine, across the street from Notre Dame- a Brittish bookstore that hosted transients if they worked off their night's stay for a few hours in the store. And if there was room for them. And if they didn't steal. And if they didn't do drugs openly or smell too bad. My friend Sheik told me about it. In fact, Sheik should be waiting for me...

I rounded the corner and was back on the main boulevard. A patisserie, a very exclusive looking place called _Cafe-Bar-Club... _and there it was. I could have missed it, it was so tucked away, and that lyre-player did much to keep potential customers from approaching... wait a minute...

"Sheik!!" I called out, and the lyre-player looked up.

"Link!" And he came over and put an arm around my shoulder.

"Isn't is awesome, man???! It's so awesome!! _Paris, _man! It's freaking _Paris, _man! I'm so stoked on it. Dude, I'm so stoked."

I gave him a deadpan look. "U r teh biggest stoner ever."

"Yeah, man!! I'm stoned on _Paris, _man!! So cool, man, so cool."

Sheik and I met in the community college we both went to in Oregon. I was from Oregon, where I grew up on two hundred acres of land with a farm and a small ranch. Most of the land was used for forestry. I was the perfect farmboy, yes, but my heart was set on writing. Unfortunately, the only college that would accept me was the community college a few towns away. Sheik was there, also the perfect farmboy, but he went to public school, where he learned two things: one, that it was cool to be angsty-looking and mysterious, which was why he regularly wore red eye-contacts and a skin-tight shirt with a creepy red eye motif that he was "stoked on." And, two, that all he wanted to do was play music. So he took up the lyre and played constantly, but no music program would accept him except, alas, the community school. We were roommates the first year, then, in light of our miserable failed attempts at progress, we both decided to drop out and come to Paris, because...

"Sheik... why did we choose Paris again?" I asked, looking around at the yellowish-gray buildings, yellowish-gray river and yellow-ish gray people.

"I'm a street-musician, remember? I need a city where I can live off being a street-musician."

"And _I _chose Paris because..."

Sheik had a blank look for a moment. Then his eyes lit up and he gave me a shove.

"Dude. _Hemingway, _man. Hem. Ming. Way."

"Oh yeah..." My heart sank like the proverbial ton of bricks. _Hemingway._ Like I was _ever_ going to write like Hemingway.

"Well come _on, _dude! Let's check out the scene, man! You gotta meet Talon. He owns the bookstore. He's friggin' _crazy_ man." He tugged on my sleeve, but something else tugged on me too, a strange feeling of destiny, like my whole life was going to change at that very moment... God, I suck at this.

I turned around to take one more look at the Notre Dame, complete in all her front-side glory and scaffolding for repairs... just as a black stretch-limo pulled up right in front of us. I stopped. Sheik, noticing I wasn't following, turned to look also. The chauffeur got out of the car and walked around to open the back door. One movie-star-gorgeous leg stepped out in a black stiletto shoe. Then another. Out stepped the most beautiful woman out of all three hundred women I'd ever seen in my life. She wore a black dress and had long golden hair and one of those hats whose brim is wider than the rings of Saturn. With enough feathers for you to safely assume that peacocks were now an endangered species. And yeah. She had a cigarette holder longer than Audrey Hepburn's whole body.

"Sheik... who is that??"

Sheik looked at her with a slightly grim expression.

"That's Zelda 'DeeeRule' or something like that. She's the daughter of some famous fashion designer and an heiress."

"DeeeRule, I've never heard of it. What are you talking about, Sheik?"

Sheik pointed over to a huge billboard. A woman who was the spitting image of this one, except older, was on it- presumably this one's mother. The Billboard said only one thing: D'Hyrule.

"Sheik, you idiot. That's not DeeeRule, it's pronounced Duh-High-Rool."

"That's not how the French say it..."

"And what, my friend, do the French know? Not much, especially about how to pronounce shit."

"Yeah, they say it all funny, like sheeeet."

It was true though. Zelda Duh'Hyrule was the most famous fashion designer ever. Even _I _had heard of her.

"Wait a sec... are you sure it isn't the _mother_ who's named Zelda?"

"They're both named Zelda. It's some tradition. Every woman in that family is named Zelda, back to the time when they were all princesses and royalty or something like that."

"Uh-huh...." I stared at the woman. She didn't notice me. Her chauffeur and two other official-looking men escorted her into Cafe-Bar-Club.

"She's beautiful," I declared. "I have to meet her. How do I get near her, though?"

"Well, she does ride up here in that limo at the same time every day, if that helps."

"That is terribly convenient. Really helps the plot along. But I'm not, uh, the type to get into that cafe-bar-club place, huh?"

"No. But you do have approximately fifteen seconds each day to get through her bodyguards to meet her."

"Sounds like a challenge. C'mon. Let's go back inside."

We went into the crowded used bookstore. A jolly bearded man was at the desk.

"Ah! Sheik! Eez this your leeetle friend you've been talkeeeng about???"

"Link, this is Talon, the owner of Shakespeare & Co. Talon, Link. He's a writer. You do still have a bed for him, right?"

"Oh, yes, certainly! So tell me, Leeenk, how do you like Paris so far? Eeezn't eet the most beautiful city you have ever seeen?"

"It smells like piss."

"Ah, yes! Zee men here like to pissé in between the cars on the streets."

"How romantic."

***

End of Chapter

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Author's Note: Just so everyone knows, whenever I make fun of Paris or the French, it is because I absolutely _love_ them and I'm only making fun in the first place because I totally adore them. I was lucky enough to spend a year in Paris when I was nineteen and it _changed my life_. Anyway, so if I offend anyone, I apologize, and please understand that I have the utmost love for all things French!

P.S. That also goes for Oregon, and hippies, and stoners, and pretty much everything else I make fun of.


	2. The City of Light Yellow

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**Chapter 2**

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I settled quickly into life at Shakespeare & Co. There were little beds scattered throughout the store. During the day, people sat on them to read. At night, they were claimed by whatever transients were making residence at the place. I found one upstairs, tucked away in the biography section, with only a few visible bedbugs. The accomodations were meager- one sink that everybody shared (with beetles), one bathroom upstairs- a squatter, smaller than a closet, its walls lined with books that will forever carry the stench of pee. Hmmm. _The Book Of Mudora. _I might have wanted to read it, if half its pages weren't torn out to wipe, uhhh... I won't go there.

I worked for my bed every day with a few hours of cleaning and organizing the bookstore. I considered it a lucky day if I wasn't cleaning the sink area or scrubbing the squatter. There was no shower, so I started to stink real fast. Now, I don't mind a good hard-day-on-the-farm stink, but this was slimy, Paris-pollution stink. Fellow transients at the Shakespeare told me about a community shower across the river. Grimy, but it got the job done.

I only had so much in my savings, though. I'd soon need to make a little money if I was going to feed myself. Sheik did fine playing lyre in the metro stations. Lots of pity money down there, he said.

And every day, at 3pm, I watched Zelda Duh'Hyrule from the second floor window of the store, leave her black limo and walk with her escort into cafe-bar-club. She must have some business there, some big fashion deal. Sometimes her escorts followed her with arms full of suitcases and big rolled up sheets of paper.

Sheik came back early one day to find me staring out the window, waiting for the mysterious Zelda to appear.

"Dude! What are you doing, man! You're wasting your life! Come get high with me instead, man, don't waste your life away."

"I've got to meet her. I've got to find a way."

"Geez, man, come on!" Sheik dragged me downstairs and outside.

"See," he said to me, "All you gotta do is the Stare."

"The stare?"

"Yeah. It's a trick I'm learning down in the metros. See, the women here will sleep with you if you stare at them right. It's like this dark, intense stare. You see an attractive woman on the metro, and you make eye-contact, man, and if she holds your gaze, that means she'll sleep with you. These French women! They don't even want to know your name! They just bring you up to their apartment and BAM! Next thing you know you're using their toothbrush."

"No way, Sheik. No women are like that anywhere, even in Paris."

"I'm serious! Here- you stare at them like this-" Sheik put on a face that settled into a half-pout, half bug-eyed look of terror.

"You look like you just swallowed a bombchu." Lucky for him, he kept his face was half-covered in bandages.

"It works, man, I'm telling you!"

"Has it worked for you yet?"

"Uh, well, uh..."

"Shhh- here she comes-"

The black limo had appeared, and was pulling up to the corner. Suddenly Sheik shoved me right in front of the little gate that closed in the outdoor seating area of the cafe-bar-club. I was right in her way, and she was coming straight towards me. Her escorts were still fumbling at the car with her papers and fabrics.

It was the perfect set-up.

Except I hadn't showered in eight days.

"Hi, I'm Link," I said with a big foolish grin on my face as she approached. "I'm a big fan of your, um, big, uh, fashion-ness..."

Zelda, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, gave me a look of mild disgust and said,

"I never sleep with a man whose name I know."

And she brushed past me.

Then she turned.

"Leak, you said? Like a toilet leak?"

"No, LLLL-INK."

"Leeenk?? Oh, like a leeetle chain. That you pull to flush the toilet. Okay." Then she was sizing me up.

"Have you ever done any modeling, Leeenk?"

"Well, uhh... yes?"

"Meet me at my studio at Place de la Concorde, dix-sept hueres trente." Then she continued walking until she disappeared behind the doors of cafe-bar-club. Her escorts stumbling behind her gave me a look of contempt. I turned to Sheik, some feet away.

"Dude!" he said. "See? She's already inviting you to her studio!"

"Naw, man, I'm pretty sure she was talking about her office."

"Oooh- kinky!"

"Now I just have to figure out..." I raced back into Shakespeare & Co. Talon was nowhere to be seen, but there was a pretty redhead at the desk.

"You must be Link!" She said to me. "I'm Malon, Talon's daughter. Sheik has told me so much about you!"

"Uh, wow. Yeah." I said. If I hadn't felt inexplicably like my destiny had been tied to Zelda's for several lifetimes now, I would have been way into Malon. Oh well.

"Hey Malon," I said. "Do you know what deez-set-errr-trunt means?"

"Oh, yes, definitely! It means five thirty."

"Ah. And, uh, do you happen to know where Plass-de-la-Concorde is?"

Malon pulled out a map for me and gave me directions.

"Place de la Concorde is a big place... do you know what you're looking for, exactly?"

"Yeah, the Duh'Hyrule offices."

Malon giggled. "It's pronounced Dee-Rule. If anyone heard you say duh-Hyrule, they'd laugh themselves silly at you."

"Yeah, well, thanks for the tip," I said, a little miffed. What was it with these French people? They said everything weird.

"Anyway, you're in luck," Malon said. "The d'Hyrule offices are right under the huge d'Hyrule billboard right in the center walk-area. You can't miss them."

"Thanks," I said, and turned to Sheik. "Come on, I only have two and a half hours to douche, or whatever the French call it. Let's go!"

***

End of Chapter

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